Breaking the news to Evenstar was an event that I cannot soon forget. Amethyst and I decided against rousing him from his sleep, but we didn’t expect to wait as long as we did. We continued with our mundane chores for the next few hours as we dreaded his awakening. Neither of us wanted to tell our mentor that his life’s work had been compromised, but I ended up being the one to break the news.
When Evenstar stirred and groggily rubbed his eyes a feeling of numbness washed over me. It was as though I was watching my life pass before me and I could only observe. A page drifted up to my eyes and I began to speak.
“Evenstar,” my voice said with a somber remark, “you received a letter from a pony named Constance. In it, he claims that he knows of your work, and that you have competition for your analog equations.” My voice dictated the letter, but I could only helplessly stand there as I watched hundreds of emotions wash across his face. To this day I cannot imagine the kind of pain and fear that flickered in his eyes as I trudged through the letter; emotions that I was inflicting with every word.
By the time I was finished with my speech, I noted a single tear tracing its path down Evenstar’s cheek. He didn’t say anything as he rose from his bunk and stepped over to the chalkboard that held his precious equations.
“Evenstar?” Amethyst’s voice felt like it echoed as our mentor reverently sat down in front of the board. He was perfectly still, or so I thought, but as I approached him, I noticed his eyes. They were almost shaking, and I had half a mind to see if he was having some sort of fit, but I soon realized that he was looking for something.
His gazed drifted between every chalkboard he could see, his mind presumably taking in all the information it could muster. However, I soon noticed the matted fur beneath his eyes that he neglected to wipe away.
Then, without warning, he rose to his hooves, reached out to the board, and touched on one of the equations. A moment later, and he had smeared a long streak of smudged chalk across the board. I could almost feel Amethyst protesting from behind me, and I knew that the action shocked me. I watched silently as he withdrew his hoof, spun on his forelegs, and drove his hind legs into the board. A strange emotion stained his face as the chalkboard cracked underneath the force of his hooves. He let himself fall to the floor, his chest heaving in a silent cry that tore my heart apart. I was watching the pony that had promised me a future watch his collapse before his eyes.
“It’s all over,” he whispered to the floor in his crossed forelegs. Amethyst and I had drifted side by side by this time, and it was only when she whispered that I realized our position.
“I didn’t think he would take it this hard.”
I wanted to agree, but I couldn’t help but feel his pain. I had been in a similar situation only a few months prior.
“Why,” Evenstar whispered as he tried to rise to his hooves. His body refused his demand, causing him to fall back to the floor in a heap. “Why did this happen?”
“It’ll be okay,” I offered, trying to sooth his pain in any way that I could.
“Starswirl,” he muttered as he wiped the tears from his face, “It’s not going to be okay. I need a minute.” He rose to his hooves and stumbled out of the room. I was speechless, never before had I seen such a display of controlled rage from Evenstar. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head as he walked through the door to the stairwell, but as it closed, I remember feeling completely helpless. The mentor I had grown to love had just lost everything and there was nothing I could do to ease his pain.
“I… can’t imagine how he feels,” I whispered.
“I don’t think he can either. I know I can’t. Losing your life’s work so suddenly…” Amethyst’s voice trailed off as she turned back to the cracked chalkboard. For a moment, she seemed as though she would finish her thought, but she turned to me and looked into my eyes.
“You know,” she started without averting her gaze, “Evenstar changed when you showed up.” Worry filled my mind “He used to talk about the Analog equations like some sort of… impossible proof. He’s had his hunch for years, or so he claims, but I’ve never seen him look at infinitesimals before.”
“Well,” I started as I glanced to the chalkboard to evade her prying gaze, “he only got that letter from Zeno the other day.”
“No… It’s more than that… I…” she paused for a moment as searched for words to match her thoughts. “Evenstar… He never believed he could solve them before.”
“What?” I asked as I continued to let my gaze wander across the room.
“I think you may have given him the hope to continue.”
“Me?” I snapped my attention to Amethyst who only nodded in response. “Why me?”
“You’re the anomaly, Starswirl. You don’t belong here, you’re an Earth Pony. You should be out farming, doing what you were made to do, not cooped up in here doing magic that you can’t perform.”
I was flustered by her statement. Her tone was positive, but her words were harsh. I nearly stopped her, but she continued before I could protest.
“Look at yourself, you’ve got nothing but your mind. That’s all you need, isn’t it? You don’t need a horn, or an advanced degree, you just have to hope. Evenstar’s been working towards the analog equations for years now, but he’s never been as interested as he is right now, when he works with you.
“You never heard him when he used to talk about his work, how downtrodden he felt. Sure, he worked hard, but it was never inspired.” Amethyst let out a deep breath as she ran her hoof through her mane. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you this,” she muttered. “Sorry, I’ll just…” she started back to one of the tables and pulled several things onto its surface. “Can you help me with something?”
For some reason, that request sparked something in my mind. I guess I realized that Amethyst wasn’t as shut off as she had seemed. She had, in her own strange way, opened up to me and I… well… I’m not sure how I felt at the time. I guess I felt lost amid the chaos of the day. So much had happened, so much had been set in motion, that I couldn’t truly process everything at once.
So, I voided my mind of all distractions, stepped over to the table, and watched as Amethyst began her work. The jealousy I had felt so many times before was strangely muted as she cast her magic shell. The MBUs were unmistakably jagged, however, the shell itself had seen a major reworking since I had last seen it used, and she cast it without a second thought.
“So…” I muttered as I looked into the writhing stack of cubes. “What do you need me to do?”
“Alright,” she started, her eyes narrowing as she scanned over the page on the table. “This is all the math behind the shell, but I kind of want to…” she looked to the board filled with details on infinitesimals. “I think infinitesimals might be the key to my problem.”
“You mean the really tiny things?”
She snickered slightly, “Yes, the tiny things. I think they might work. I mean, ever since we started working with them, I’ve got this feeling that there’s something more to them than just being small.”
“What?”
She scanned the page once more as she hummed a few notes to an untitled song. “I mean, the shape is more or less a circle, and I know it’s volume by formula. What if I could bypass all of this altogether?” She pointed toward the dozens of grids that she had painstakingly drawn. “That took hours to make, what if there was a function that could do it all for me?”
We deliberated on that question for hours as Amethyst used me as her wall. She tossed ideas at me, and I just asked whatever questions came to mind. I didn’t know what I was doing, or if I was even helping, but she seemed to be enjoying herself. There was a spark of some sort in her eyes as she unleashed her mind on the problem. It was as though she craved working like this, powering her way through the complex spells and unleash their power. I loved watching her work as well, even if I wasn’t participating, I found ¬¬something about the development enchanting. The passion in her eyes sparked my own, and as she grew more excited as she chipped away at the colossal problem, I let my own mind wander as well.
What could we be unlocking? What impact could we make on the world? What secrets would we find hidden right in front of us?
“What do you think?” Amethyst asked, “do you think it would work?”
“What?” I asked as I shook myself from my trance.
“Have you been listening at all?” Frustration laced her voice, and I took a step back. Her gaze shifted to my hooves and then back to my face, her ears lowering as she replayed what had happened in her mind. “I- I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“It’s okay,” I said without reversing my movement. “I just got distracted.”
“Anyway,” she said as she turned her attention to the notes on the table, “I’m at a loss. It looks like we can guess where the value is at infinity, and be accurate, but there’s something that bugs me about the whole process.”
“Well, we are using pretty old math, right?”
“Old math?” Her eyebrow cocked as she drew closer to the page.
“Well… yeah. I mean, addition isn’t a new thing, neither are the rest of the systems we’re using, but they’re not made for weird things like infinity, right?” I was starting to connect the dots to a mathematical proof that had eluded magicians for centuries. I didn’t have any reason to think that I was right, in fact I was using her as a wall of sorts when I posed it. I still wish I could go back and argue my question, perhaps things might have happened differently. But alas I cannot do so, in good faith, as it would be irresponsible.
“Math is timeless,” Amethyst protested as she tapped the page. “Addition doesn’t change, it’s the same as it’s always been. One plus one equals two, and that’s just how it works.” She paused for a moment as she looked back at her page. “Maybe you’re onto something, Starswirl, but I don’t see it. Math just can’t be ‘outdated,’ it’s right by definition.”
“Well, if it’s right, then why does it break when we try to look at stuff like this?”
Amethyst paused for a moment as she pondered the question. Finally, after about a minute of silence, she said, “Because infinity doesn’t exist in nature, or at least, I don’t think it does. Either way, we should wait to talk to Evenstar about things like that, he knows a lot more theory than I do.” She let out a yawn. “I think I’ll work on this tomorrow. It feels like we’ve been talking ourselves in circles, but…” she paused as her gaze met mine. She didn’t have to say anything, her eyes said it all, however she spoke all the same. “Thank you, I needed that. I just hate seeing Evenstar like this, and even if we didn’t get anything done, it helped.”
With that statement, Amethyst packed up her work and left. I hadn’t realized how late it had grown until the door closed behind her and I was left in the darkness of the lab. She had used her magic as the night had crept up on us, keeping the room rather bright, but now that she was gone, only the small flames in the lanterns lit the room in a dim yellow glow. The lab seemed different, almost eerie, in the veil of night. Everything was still, as though work paused whenever we left the lab, but for some reason, I couldn’t help but think about Constance.
I suppose it was the creepy feeling of the room that first brought my mind to that similarly strange letter. Who was Constance? How did they know about the Analog Equations? Where did they find out that Evenstar had an assistant? A chill rolled down my spine as my eyes as a new thought pushed its way into my mind. What if they’re here? My eyes darted to the darkest corners of the room as the feeling grew. Even the notion that I might not be alone was unnerving, but the circumstances surrounding that mysterious letter from Constance made my hooves tremble in fear. I quickly swallowed my growing fear and bolted to the door. I wanted nothing to do with the lab in such an unsettling state.